The way that universal prekindergarten in New York state is funded is flawed and unsustainable, according to a recent report from three organizations.
The Alliance for Quality Education, The Public Policy Education Fund, and the Children's Agenda all say the funding model needs an overhaul.
“Attending pre–K has huge short- and long-term impacts on our earliest learners,” said Shannon Mullin, senior policy analyst with the Children's Agenda.
The report, Reimagining Universal Pre-Kindergarten Funding in New York, found that public school districts received more foundation aid between last school year and this one, but pre-K funding remained flat across the board.
The organizations recommended an increase in the amount of money earmarked for each student in pre-K, with regular reviews to account for inflation and the cost of services and resources, like staffing.
“New York’s youngest learners deserve the same commitment to equity and opportunity that New York promises to every K–12 student,” Marina Marcou-O’Malley, co-executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, said in a statement. “Pre-K is education and it should be funded as such so children are able to benefit from high-quality early education. This is about fairness, sustainability, and keeping our promise to invest in the future of every child in New York.”
If that rate were set at $10,000 per 4-year-old student per school year, the annual cost would be about $1.7 billion, according to the report.
That investment, Mullin said, is a worthy one that would pay off in the years and decades to come.
“If kids are successful in early grades and middle school and high school and then on to college, that benefits all of us and the wider economy," Mullin said. "So, making sure our earliest learners have the supports they need really is a benefit to the whole community and the state at large."
Districts with higher rates of students living in poverty are the most vulnerable to a decline in quality early childhood education, and even wealthier districts will likely feel the strain in the coming years if nothing changes, according to the report.
“As more and more programs across the state reach ‘Universal’ status by serving all available families, these districts will also be faced with frozen per-pupil rates and difficult funding disparities,” the report stated. “Without changes to the current funding structure, the gains New York has seen in UPK quality and access will be threatened statewide.”
The report echoed similar findings from the state Education Department last year.
The state Board of Regents noted challenges to ensure universal pre-K is accessible and adequate, including space issues, insufficient student reimbursement rates, and a “complexity of having two main sets of laws govern the same program” rather than one.
“The NYS Board of Regents is committed to universality for both three- and four-year-olds by 2035,” the state Education Department’s Office of Early Learning said in its 2024 UPK Consolidation Report. “Although the number of universal prekindergarten students served has grown over the past five years ... to achieve the goal of universality the critical challenges of funding and legal complexities need to be addressed.”
